Netflix Goes Dark And Finds It's No Place To Be — It started this morning with an email apology from online movie rental powerhouse Netflix, confirming to its 8.4 million users that the company was suffering a shipping and distribution outage. — I called the company this morning …

Ben Ling Lands (Back) at Google-This Time, at YouTube — Please see this disclosure related to me and Google. — Ben Ling-the high-profile Facebook platform exec who came from Google less than a year ago and then up and left the social-networking site earlier this week-is about to head back to Google …

Smartphone Is Expected via Google — T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google's Android software, according to people briefed on the company's plans. The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world …

Why Blogs Need To Be Social — Earlier this week, San Francisco-based web publishing software company Six Apart released the newest version of its flagship product, Moveable Type, and pushed the blogging community into taking the first step toward a very social future.

Confirmed: AOL will acquire Socialthing — AOL's People Networks division, formed when the company acquired Bebo, has picked up a new friend: Socialthing, a Boulder, Colo.-based start-up that aggregates social feeds from sites like Digg, Twitter, and Flickr. — The acquisition has not yet been completed, but is close to it.

Palm Treo Pro Revealed (Best Looking Palm Ever) — Wow, check out the Treo Pro, previously thought to be the Treo 850. It's safe to say Palm is plunging ahead with the Centro's industrial design, but the stark (glossy?) black and white color scheme with the phone/end orbs make it slick, rather than kiddie cool.

Exclusive: A Look at Google Ad Planner Data Vs. Comscore — When Google Ad Planner came out back in June, I immediately thought of Comscore - and I was not alone. Many in the marketing industry thought that Google's product would be a “Comscore killer,” and when I noted as much in my coverage …

Remember Photosynth? Well, it's old-hat now. — Photosynth (ted talk, demo page, our coverage), a project acquired by Microsoft, made for one of the coolest tech demos to grace the internet in a very long time. The experience that Photosynth provided by inferring 3d structures from collections …

Live Olympics 2008 Dashboard - Powered by Zoho DB & Reports — Olympic fever has gripped many of us. This edition could provide a much closer finish at the top of the table with China and USA running head-head. China being the host nation, could have the home advantage to topple US leadership this Olympics.

Coming in September: Better 3G In The iPhone 3G — As we reported last night, two reliable sources say Apple will issue a software fix that will address the widespread complaints regarding lost calls and inconsistent 3G access with the iPhone 3G. The problem (and it is a real issue …

Dell Puts the Bite on Apple — Former Apple vet Tim Bucher, now at Dell, is counting on his Zing software to give iTunes some competition — On Nov. 10, 2004, Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs had a strained conversation with Tim Bucher, one of the company's engineering executives.